Exterior cleaning in Ringwood
Roof cleaning, render and masonry soft washing, gutters cleared and block paving brought back, across Ringwood, Poulner and the BH24 estates.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Ringwood gives two different answers, and which one you need depends on what you own. Old brick and lime around the Market Place wants a soft wash and next to no pressure. Concrete tile and block paving out on the estates will take a good deal more.
Most calls out of Ringwood start with one of three things. A frontage in the old part of town has gone dark and streaked and there is nowhere to work from except the pavement. A roof on one of the estates carries moss across a whole slope and makes the house look twenty years older than it is. Or a block of flats has gutters nobody has been into for years and green running down the render below every joint.
We come and survey it surface by surface, because a painted town frontage, a concrete tiled roof and a block paved drive want three different methods and two of them want almost no force. You are told what will come up, what needs treating and then leaving to work, and what we would leave alone. The site visit is free and the written price carries each surface on its own line.
The work
Cleaning a market town and the estates around it
Town centre frontages, with nowhere to stand. Around a fifth of the housing here predates the First World War, and the streets off the Market Place are soft brick, lime mortar and painted render with the odd pebbledash addition. Nearly one home in five is a terrace, so there is often no side access at all: hoses come through the house or over a wall, and the water has to be caught rather than left to sheet down the pavement. That changes the method more than the surface does. Old brickwork and lime joints are soft washed at low pressure with a test patch first, never lanced.
Blocks of flats and their communal gutters. Getting on for three in ten homes in Ringwood are flats, which puts a lot of the town's render, roof and rainwater goods under a managing agent rather than one owner. It is the same work priced by elevation and by block: gutter runs cleared and rodded, downpipes and outlets checked, communal render soft washed, and the bin stores and drying areas done while the kit is already set up. The person who rings is often not the person who can order it, so give us the agent and we will quote them direct.
Estate roofs at Poulner and Hightown are a different job again. A little over half the town went up between the war and the millennium, which on a roof means concrete interlocking tile now porous enough to hold moss like a pad. The growth is scraped off dry, the tile soft washed at low pressure and treated with a biocide so the spores left behind do not bring the regrowth back inside a year. Nothing is forced under the lap, because that puts water onto the felt instead of into the gutter, and a rocking ridge tile is a repair to sort before the clean rather than after it.
Block paving is what most of the newer estates are laid in, and it is re-sanded after washing because the jetting lifts the jointing sand out along with the weed and the algae. Concrete, slab and brick paths take a rotary nozzle. Black spot lichen does not blast off at any pressure and wants treating and time. Sealing is a separate decision and only worth it on paving that is genuinely dry.
Planting is soaked and sheeted first, drains and gullies near the work are covered, cars come off the drive and windows go shut on the side we are on. Everything we spray is a biocide approved for the job and used to its label, which is what the biocides regime the HSE administers requires, and where the run off goes is planned to pollution prevention guidance rather than worked out once a drive is already sheeting water.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Thomas Hannen comes out, looks at every surface and writes the price himself, and the site visit and the written quote cost nothing. It is itemised: the method for each surface, protection, access, and where the water and residue go, on separate lines you can hold against anyone else's. Cleaning is maintenance and needs no application anywhere in the town. What wants checking is what comes after it. Ringwood parish carries around sixty listed entries, most of them in the older streets near the Market Place and the Meeting House, and on a listed building consent comes first. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where maintaining a wall ends and altering it begins.
Cost
What decides the price of a clean
No rate per square metre, because the same metre can be two minutes or twenty depending what is growing on it. Access is priced first: a terrace off the Market Place where the hose comes through the house, a semi at Poulner with a drive down one flank, and a block with gutters three storeys up are three different jobs. work at height rules decide whether that is pole work or a tower. Then how bad it has got, since years of growth wants treating and a second visit, not more pressure. Ask any quote what method each surface gets and where the run off goes.
If there is a date
A viewing, a visit or a deadline
Ring rather than use the form. Nothing here is emergency work, but most of it has a date on it: a sale, a letting inspection, a block's annual visit, or scaffolding coming down. Tell us the date on the phone and we will say honestly whether it can be done properly by then, because it changes the order the surfaces get done in. Outside Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, by arrangement.
The one local thing
In a town of flats, the outside is often not yours to book
Ringwood has a far higher share of flats than the villages around it. Getting on for three in ten homes here are flats, which means a great many people looking at a green gable or a gutter full of moss cannot simply book the work. The freeholder or the managing agent instructs it, it is paid for through the service charge, and once the cost per leaseholder passes a set threshold the landlord has to consult the leaseholders formally before it goes ahead.
That is section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and it is the reason a job everybody agrees needs doing can still sit for a year. It also means the quote has to be written so that a leaseholder can read it: each elevation, each surface and each method on its own line, rather than one figure for the building.
If you are the leaseholder, the useful move is to hand your agent something specific rather than a complaint. We will come out, look at the block and put a written itemised price together, elevation by elevation, that the agent can take to the other flats. It is worth separating the jobs, too.
Clearing the gutters and outlets on the whole block is ordinary maintenance and rarely needs the same process as a full render wash, so the urgent half can often go ahead while the rest is being agreed. And doing the whole block in one visit takes far less setting up than coming back for one flat at a time, which is money that stays out of the service charge.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
Ringwood, Poulner, Hightown, Ashley Heath, Hangersley, Burley and the BH24 postcode, worked from our base near Bournemouth. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Ringwood questions we get asked
Ringwood has no conservation area. Does that make cleaning simpler?
It removes one layer, but not the other. The town falls under the New Forest planning authority and carries 61 listed entries, the Meeting House and the Manor House among them. Cleaning is maintenance, so a wash of unlisted brick or render needs no consent from anybody. On a listed frontage the method itself becomes the issue, and we agree that with the conservation officer before anything gets wetted.
The gutters pack with leaf litter every autumn. Why here?
Ringwood sits with heath and woodland on its doorstep, so the gutters, valleys and flat roof outlets load up with needles, catkins and leaf mulch far faster than an open estate would. That mulch holds water against the fascia and feeds the moss on the tile edge above it. We clear the run, flush it through, then check the outlet, because a clean gutter draining into a blocked gully only moves the problem down.
Can pre-1900 brickwork here be washed without damage?
Not with a lance. Nearly a fifth of the housing predates 1919 and the pre-1900 band is the largest single cohort at 13.0%, which means soft handmade brick and lime mortar joints. High pressure strips the fired face off the brick and opens the beds, and the wall then holds more water than it did before. Those elevations get a low pressure wash and a biocide, and the growth dies back over the following weeks.
What is on the written quote for a Ringwood semi?
Every elevation is priced on its own line, along with the gutter run, the soffit and fascia, any conservatory roof and the drive, so you can strike out whatever you do not want doing. Semis are 20.0% of the housing here and the side facing the party wall is usually the dirty one, so it often carries more work than the front. Thomas Hannen measures it and writes it up. The visit and the quote are free.
What should I look at from the pavement before calling?
Stand across the road and start at the gutter line. Sagging between brackets, a dark tide mark down the fascia, or plants growing out of the run all say the gutter is full. Then look at the shaded slope and the bottom metre of wall, which greens first on Ringwood's freely draining sandy ground because splashback keeps it wet. Photograph what you can see and we can usually tell you on the phone whether it is a clean or a repair.
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Find out what will come up, and what will not
A free site visit in Ringwood, then a written itemised price with every surface on its own line. Tell us if there is a date to work to.